Writing about random topics

Predictions I made 20 years ago–Part 2

Continuing on from my previous post about predictions I made when I was 15, next is where things get interesting. The below in italics is what I wrote, and the stuff in blue text is my comments.

b) The building in which I work is a 32 story, 2000 square foot lot. This seems rather large but it is a big, powerful company.

Correct, mostly. I work at Microsoft and while it does have some large buildings, most of them are small. Put them altogether and it is at least 32 stories.

It is downtown and receives a lot of business in the way of computers (or, if I am a lawyer, in a law firm with the above mentioned). I work in my own office developing different computer programs and fixing other people’s computers which have broken down.

Correct! I’m not in a law firm but I do have my own office and I develop computer programs. I don’t fix other people’s computers, instead, I work on software to prevent them from breaking in the first place (by stopping spam and malware).

The company where I work is not downtown, however (while they do have offices downtown, they are not where I work).

I sit down some of the time to do some of the work, and get to walk around to test out other programs and to troubleshoot computers.

Correct! The part about troubleshooting is wrong but it is right in the sense that I talk to members of my team to see how things are going.

My salary is about $228,000/year because I have to do so many programs and make business deals and I am near the top of the corporation.

Totally wrong. My salary is not close do that, nor am I near the top.

c) I work both alone and as a team.

Correct!

As a team I work on ideas for the next programs and working business deals such as mergers and supplies.

This is so correct it is disturbing. I don’t work on mergers but I do deals to acquire services from third parties.

Alone I work on developing the programs and showing them to my few superiors and suggest improvements.

Correct! Although I work as a team so there is a lot of collaboration between myself, my team members, and my superiors. I both give and receive feedback on my designs as well as others’.

The corporation is a large one, preferably Microsoft.

Bam! Nailed this one 10 years before it actually occurred!

Most of my co-workers are my age or older and have high levels of education. Most of them have Masters degrees or bachelors in computer science.

Correct, although the number of people with Master’s degrees is not that high. But a lot of them have degrees in computer science or engineering. At the time I wrote this I thought I would pursue computer science but instead I graduated from computer engineering.

My superiors are the president of the company plus a few others.

While technically true, the president of the company is my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss (six levels above me.)

This one I got wrong.

I serve computer companies and customers with computers which do not work properly.

True, but the scope of my statement is too narrow. We serve customers who don’t have email filters, and without our product their computers would not work properly.

Mostly correct.

So, those are predictions about my work that I made 20 years ago. Some I got wrong, others I got right, and some I got extremely right.

And, I wasn’t even trying to do a mentalist prediction at the time. I wouldn’t become interested in magic until a couple of months after I wrote this paper.